Revolution

After a presidential campaign founded on Hope for Changing the System, and after a year of discovering how difficult such change is, individuals and media have shifted their ever-present criticism of government. The former way was to blame the other party. Republicans blamed Democrats, Democrats blamed Republicans, Democrats and Republicans blamed Independents, and Greens blamed everybody.

No, I'm not going to say that they've stopped blaming each other. Who can say that with a straight face?

But there is new wind in the sails of political discourse: "the brokenness of our government." The blame now falls on how broken the whole system is (for an exemplary cross-fertilization of blame and brokenness, see this CNN piece, notable especially because it comes from a source generally sympathetic to the Democrats-in-power).

The "founding fathers" had a term for the existence of a government system that wasn't doing its job. This term is memorialized in the Declaration of Independence: it is "Tyranny." And the "founding fathers" had one solution for the problem of Tyranny: "alter or abolish it." This is the revolution of which Thomas Jefferson said, "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion."

I surmise that most thoughtful Americans would say that our right to vote is the vehicle of such seasonal revolution. Is this not the power that is touted as so precious and unique in our country? Don't we get a revolution every two years on the first Tuesday in November? Yet this perspective misses the mark with respect to the new evaluation of our system as "broken." For we have not failed to elect senators and representatives to their houses for the past two hundred years. The problem is not in the exercise of the vote. In fact, the problem may lie precisely in the exercise of the vote.

Electing persons, even well-meaning persons hoping for change, into a system which pays them to be invested in the system guarantees that the system will stay in place. Senators and representatives (and all other elected and appointed officials) face an immediate conflict of interest when it comes to altering or abolishing government: they are paid by the system as it presently stands. And very often they are paid for long periods of time--even lifetimes--in this way, arming and armoring the Enemy of Change. Electing different people into the system, if it is broken, is no way to fix a broken system.

Whence comes revolution, if not by the vote? It comes out of the Invisible Source from which all power flows in the United States. It comes from the great god who rules democracy and all those who live by the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. The weapon which overthrows the grand palace of a broken democracy is none other than the Almighty Dollar.

Have we not heard this before? Do not large numbers of rural Montanans invest more than most of our 401(k)s in semi-automatic weapons, convinced that the government (which they have known is broken long before CNN broke the story) would someday come for them? Is not the tool of money to be used in acquiring weapons of power for the coup d'etat? No--the secret to bringing a curse on both the houses is not in the spending of money. True revolution for us means not spending the money.

The people who stand on American soil and want change in the government must dry up the Water of Life upon which that government depends. They must stop paying the government. They must stop paying their taxes. Money is the only power which democratic government really respects, and therefore the only war that may be effectively levied is a financial one. Happily, this call to arms resonates with a common cry across the nation that we are paying too much in taxes. However, to date we have failed to grasp the real problem: it is not that we are paying too many dollars to Uncle Sam; it is that we are paying even a single cent.

The sad news for our ruggedly individualistic souls is that one person refusing to pay taxes does not stop the monster. Like the work of the "founding fathers," every idea borne of hope must find popular support and sally forth on risky popular action. We would have to do more than prick a few holes in the line that supplies life to our government. If we want change, we must slice a gushing wound in the conduit. The strike for hope must be no small nick in the hide of the monster; it must hit an artery. Only then do revolutionaries have the chance to bring the behemoth to its knees.

But who will organize such a massive demonstration of peaceful civil disobedience? Who will spearhead an effort that will certainly incur the wrath of those paid to collect (because their salaries depend on it)? And who will encourage us to persevere when the government threatens with what we already know: that without income the government as it stands will not provide all the services it does now? Who will have the strength to begin a new revolution?

It has been more than twenty years. Let me call the bluff of the brokenness pundits: Can we really change the system?

~emrys